Forbes, Stephen Alfred

Stephen Forbes was born in Illinois on a small pioneer farm on May 29, 1844, one of six children. His father died when Stephen was ten, and it was Stephen’s older bother, Henry, who sacrificed his own education to send Stephen to Beloit Academy in 1860, a short-lived endeavor because the funds could not be continued. Henry and Stephen served as soldiers in the American Civil War (during which Henry died) and, afterwards, in 1865, Stephen went to study medicine at Rush College in Chicago, but dropped out because of shortage of funds and an aversion to conducting surgery without anaesthetics. He then became infatuated with botany and other aspects of natural history, and worked for some time as a schoolteacher. When J.W. Powell resigned as curator of the Illinois Natural History Society in 1872, Stephen succeeded him. He was appointed in 1877 Director of the State Laboratory of Natural History, a position that he held for the next 40 years, at which time he was made head of the Illinois...